Yeah, I was born in 1950, in Wakkanai.And in about the autumn of my 3rd high school
year, I wrote a “Let me join the company” letter to Tamiya, and a “Come have a
look” answer came back.

----What were
your reasons exactly, for wanting to join Tamiya?

The 1/12 Honda F1.

----… Um, but
you joined the company in ’68, right?And the RA273 was released in November ’67, so if you joined Tamiya in
the autumn, it wouldn’t have been released yet?

It was pretty close to the time it was
released, and I had previously seen articles in magazines about Tamiya’s RA273.

Before that, I had also built all of their
1/50 masterpiece series, and that “…Ah, they’re going to release the Honda F1!”
was what cinched my job seeking timing.And
when I reported to Tamiya, I had seen the real thing in Shizuoka.Before that, there had been the Kogure 1/12 Lotus 33 Climax, but that
wasn’t at what you could call a scale model level, so it was awesome that
Tamiya had suddenly leapfrogged so far ahead in one go.

----About what
time was it decided that you could join the company?

A letter came as soon as I got back home to
Wakkanai.Back then there were no tests,
just an interview, so I guess I seemed pretty keen.

----And your
posting to the molds department…?

I pretty sure I was told that before
entering the company. There was the
Apollo Program craze back in those days, wasn’t there, and it was like “We’re
in a battle with Arai, and if we don’t finish our molds as quick as we can we’ll
be in trouble”.

We were doing our injection molding at an
out-sourcer at the time, and I was charged with taking our molds to the injection
factory and setting them up, with our designers on hand.It was a place where we had to make some
serious on-the-spot decisions, like at what level to compromise and what not to
compromise.

----Then it was
a crunch over whether to be picky and have late sales, or not be picky and have
early sales.

Yes!Arai wouldn’t be picky and rush their sales dates ahead anyhow (laughs),
so we had to choose one or the other.

And as we were doing that, I was told “Go
to America” because of the oil shock, and what happened after that is as I told
you, the other day, in our talk with Chief Executive Tamiya-san.